


Be My Third

by amsch



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Spy!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:22:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amsch/pseuds/amsch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Jacobs: Spy-in-training</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be My Third

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [i will fight for you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4426595) by [isthepartyover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthepartyover/pseuds/isthepartyover). 



 

“Are you positive you want to do this?”

Davey widened his stance and tried to plant himself into the floor, tightening the wraps around his wrists. It wasn’t even light outside yet, and the storage space that doubled as their training room was dim and dusty. Katherine was standing across from him on the mat, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“I’m sure. Hit me.”

“Davey…there are plenty of other jobs that might be a good fit for you. The research you’ve been doing is really amazing, or if you’re bored you could work with Spot in the lab or with Race in logistics…”

“Katherine. Can you imagine me as partners with Spot or Race? I have to do this-

“-Because you have something to prove.” She punched Davey in the face.

His hands flew up to his jaw. “Ow! You didn’t even warn me! Holy peaches- that hurt!”

“You said you wanted me to train you like I trained the others, right? Not go easy on you?”

Davey huffed. “Yeah.”

“Just because you don’t have any physical skills now-”

“Hey!”

“-Doesn’t mean I can’t turn you into one of our best field agents. I love a good challenge! It’s just going to take some blood and sweat.”

“And tears?”

“No tears. I’m not gonna make you cry, David. If I break you, I’m not being the kind of leader I want to be. I’m not my dad, and I’m not a drill sergeant.  Just tell me when it’s too much, and we’ll take a break.”

“Thanks, Kath. And thanks for keeping this, you know, between us.”

“No problem. Are you ready to start? We have to get some basics down first.”

“I’m ready.”

They started with coordination and agility, which, unsurprisingly, wasn’t Davey’s strong suit. He tried to stay light on his feet, bouncing coltishly around the mat as Katherine called out every time his hands started dropping from a defensive position. They were both sweaty and disheveled by the time he’d started getting the hang of what his hands and feet were supposed to do, while defending himself against Kath’s wicked fast fists. When he finally got a hit in, jabbing her in the stomach, she grinned and stepped back. Davey bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath.

“You’re doing great,” she said encouragingly, as she pulled off her wraps and retied her ponytail.

“It doesn’t feel like it. I think I’m dying.”

“It’s only our first lesson. It’ll get easier.” She pulled him up and handed him a towel. “Let’s get some water. We still have time to shower and get ready before the others get here. Now, have I told you how I learned how to fight while my dad thought I was at ballroom dancing lessons? It was like some reverse Billy Elliot shit…”

\-----------

No one noticed anything unusual about how Davey and Katherine, the teams’ resident morning people, were already talking by the coffee pot as the rest of the team filtered in. Even though Davey was still the newest member of the team, people were used to finding him already in the middle of a project or in a pile of books with Kath as they stumbled in, bleary-eyed and mumbly until they’d had some caffeine. Jack was especially contrary in the morning, and Spot usually didn’t even come in until the afternoon, instead preferring to stay until the late hours of the night. Crutchie and Race joined them in the kitchen corner of the airy, open warehouse space that served as their office. Davey smiled at Crutchie and poured coffee into one of his many hideous mugs, this one a yellow monstrosity with a fat pug on it. Race was holding a can of energy drink.

“Ughhh you guys look so awake. All of you are smiling too much.”

Jack walked up, his face grim, and poured himself a giant cup of coffee. He wordlessly took Race’s energy drink and poured some into his mug, patted Davey on the head, gave Katherine a thumbs up, and headed to his desk.

Race chugged from his can and turned back to Katherine. “Hey, Boss - I’ve been thinking, maybe I could just-”

“You’re still banned from field work, Race, so stop asking me. None of us are going to be forgetting what happened with the blowdarts and the cop and…” she shuddered, “the monkeys any time soon.”

Race sighed and slumped back to his desk, where a pile of file folders was waiting for him.

“So what’s on the docket for today, boss?” Crutchie asked.

“Finch and Buttons have a recon mission later, so we’ll need you and David on intelligence. Specs is on getaway. Everyone else is just doing business as usual. Oh, and I think Spot’s looking for someone to test a new jetpack on.”

Race leapt up from his desk. “Me! I’ll do it! Please!”

Katherine looked at him and raised a single deadly eyebrow. Race sat back down.

“Great!” Crutchie said. “Hey, Davey, you got something on your face…” He licked his thumb and reached up to rub Davey’s jaw where Katherine’s punch had left a bruise.

“Ow! I mean, ew. Don’t rub your spit on my face, please.”

Katherine stifled a laugh in her coffee and went into her office.

———-

Davey was dedicated, Katherine would give him that. He showed up every morning at 6, already warmed up. She knew he was lifting weights on his own time, and she wasn’t the only one in the office who had noticed the way his clothes were suddenly a little too tight in all the right places. She’d caught no less than three of the guys staring last week when Davey had worn a baseball tee. Sure, when she tossed him water bottles they usually still hit him in the face, and he may or may not have tripped over his own feet yesterday and tried to play it off as a spontaneous lunge, but he was improving. He wasn’t sweaty and out of breath at the end of their practices anymore, and he was landing punches, jabs and kicks just the way she wanted him to.  However, the fact that their sparring sessions were becoming more evenly matched meant that their fights were getting a lot more intense. They’d even moved into using some basic weapons and Davey had turned out to have excellent aim. She rubbed a bruise on her collarbone where he’d managed to hit her from across the office during a practice shootout. She’d trained quite a few of her younger spies, and none of them had been as determined to succeed as Davey was.

Unsurprisingly, Jack and Crutchie, as Davey’s roommates, were the first to notice that Davey was up to something. Katherine walked in on them whispering in the kitchen.

“He’s definitely keeping something from us. He keeps falling asleep at like 8 pm every night, and he’s always at work before us, doing God knows what.”

“Yeah, and have you noticed that he’s always sore? I punched him on the arm yesterday and he almost cried. He won’t take his shirt off, which isn’t that weird for Davey, but I definitely saw some bruises on his ribs. I think Katherine’s involved too, she-”

Katherine stepped out of her office doorway. “What’s up?” she asked pointedly. Jack’s ears turned red and Crutchie mumbled something about “roommate stuff” as they hurried back to their desks.  Davey was watching from across the room, his eyebrows furrowed. She gave him a “later” look and he nodded, casting an anxious glance over at Jack and Crutchie’s adjoining desks before looking back down at his laptop.

—–

The next morning she brought it up as they practiced using some of Spot’s home-made weapons.

“We have to tell Crutchie and Jack eventually. They’ve noticed something’s up. Jack keeps asking me if I’m going to assign a third to their team for the next mission and I want to tell them it’s you.”

“I’m not ready!”

“Yes, you are. We’ve been training for more than a month now and you’ve come such a long way from where you started. You can really hold your own in a fight now!”

Davey scoffed and fiddled with the practice grenade he was holding. “Yeah, seeing as where I started was a skinny nerd who couldn’t even throw a punch…I told you, I don’t know if I’m good enough at this spy stuff.”

Katherine put down her weapon, a terrifying-looking combination crossbow/machine gun.

“David. What have I told you.”

“No negative self-talk, I know.”

“Being ‘good enough’ isn’t what matters, to me or to them.”

“They’ve just been doing this for so much longer, and Jack’s so good at fighting and Crutchie’s smarter than me, like street-smart, I’m just book-smart and…”

“David, are you kidding me? Jack was trained to fight when he was like 10, and Crutchie’s been a techie for almost as long. But without you, they’re not balanced. They need you. I’ve lost track of how many assignments Jack has screwed up because of his temper and recklessness. I need your cool head and logic brain. And Crutchie worries about Jack too much…he doesn’t look out for himself at all when they’re in the field. He’d throw himself into danger in a second if he thought he could help Jack, which isn’t helpful to anyone. I have them tagged for a really important mission, but they can’t do it without you.”

“Really? What kind of mission?”

Katherine nudged him with her shoulder. “That’s confidential. At least until I can brief all three of you as a team. So can we tell them already?”

——–

When Jack and Crutchie came in that morning, Katherine called them into her office. Davey was already sitting at the table, and Crutchie handed him a giant muffin in a ziplock bag.

“You forgot your breakfast. And here’s one for you too, Kath.”

“Thanks,” she said, setting it aside. She glanced at Davey, who was staring at the muffin with his shoulders hunched. “Let’s get straight to the point. Jack, Crutchie, meet your new third. David’s joining your team as Jack’s field partner.”

Jack yelled and slapped Davey on the back, and Crutchie pulled him up into a hug.  

“He’s been training with me for the last 6 weeks. I think you guys are going to be really impressed,” Katherine said, as Jack pulled her into their group hug.

“That’s amazing! We’re going to be a great team!” Crutchie said, grinning up at Davey’s red, bashful face.

“Yeah, we are,” he said, smiling over Crutchie’s head at Katherine.


End file.
